Ashanti

...significantly above the average person original: "common herd". I am not entirely sure how to describe the quality that the uneducated person often possesses while the educated one seems to lack. To me, it appears like a hand reaching out from the past and linking him to his heritage. This connection gives the unlettered man self-confidence during those times when a person feels completely alone—which often happens in the presence of strangers from another race or when in a foreign land. The Western-educated man has lost that supportive contact. Consequently, I believe he often feels adrift and is never quite at home anywhere, whether in the society of Europeans or among his own countrymen. If the educated African suffers from an "inferiority complex," a study of his own history must surely help to eliminate it.

I will now return to my main theme, with an apology for what may seem like an unnecessary detour. Proponents of the newer school of thought are generally enthusiastic advocates of what has come to be known as "Indirect Rule."¹

They view it as a remedy for many of the problems caused by the loss of national identity original: "denationalization" which they fear. They have focused their attention on the parts of West Africa where this form of administration has proven successful (at least to a certain degree), but I think they have often failed to recognize the one primary factor that, in my opinion, guaranteed its success there.

In Northern Nigeria, those who designed the administration based on the existing social foundation were also encouraging legal institutions rooted in local religious beliefs. In that country, however, this religious foundation of the legal and constitutional system remained unchallenged and secure because "it is against government policy to permit Christian missionary work original: "propaganda" within areas that are predominantly Muslim."² The respect we show in Nigeria to the principles of Islam could hardly be expected to be granted in Ashanti to a religion which, until a few years ago, had been dismissed as one of the lowest forms of worship—"fetishism" fetishism: an outdated and derogatory term used by early Europeans to describe West African religions involving the veneration of objects; Rattray argues this is a misunderstanding of their spiritual depth. In Ashanti, indeed, there are indications that the inhabitants may embrace Christianity—at least in a superficial and outward form—in the near future. By introducing Indirect Rule into this country, we would therefore seem to be encouraging a system that draws its inspiration and vitality from indigenous religious beliefs on the one hand, while on the other we are systematically...

¹ "The methods of rule which shall give the widest possible scope to Chiefs and people to manage their own affairs under the guidance of the controlling Power" (Sir F. D. Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa).
² C. K. Meek, The Northern Tribes of Nigeria, vol. ii, p. 247.